Several hundred years ago a lot of innocent people were gruesomely tortured and then slowly burned to death by the Christian fathers. The burnings were usually a public spectacle in which hundreds or thousands of Christians flocked to the town square to jeer at the victim and yell at the priests to prolong the spectacle by making it a slow fire. (see Sam Harris’ - THE END OF FAITH - chapter 3 ‘In the Shadow of God’).

Have these unfortunate victims of Christianity found justice in Heaven? Could they take their case to God? Would Jesus be the defendant?

In your opinion would this make an interesting courtroom drama? A movie? Who would you have playing Jesus? The prosecuter? The defense counselor? The victims? The priests?

How about Johnny Depp as Jesus, having sworn to tell the whole truth and nothing but, sitting on the stand explaining why it wasn’t his fault, that anything can be turned to crap in the wrong hands. A charred victim with a halo standing up in the spectator’s section quoting something from the Bible that inspired viscious cruelty in the priests and the general public? Martha Stewart as a victim? (accused of witchcraft because of a cake she prepared for the Bishop of Loudon which caused him to break out in hives and have a nightmare about going to hell).

Can we find a part for a tearful Joel Osteen? Benny Hinn selling little pendants outside the courthouse? Clay as a witness for the defense? Billy Graham with dreadlocks as God? Ideas? Title of the movie?

Absolutely, she had been incinerated before the festive crowd when someone mistook her chocolate torte for a devil’s food cake.

She whips up a bit of demonstrative evidence by preparing a torte in court, whereupon juror number 4, played by Charles Laughton, has to be excused for sidling over the railing, shoving a fistful of the evidence into his mouth, and moaning, “It’s sinfully delicious by any name.”

Signature

“I am one of the few people I know who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror.” Sam Harris October 17, 2005